In a strongly-worded attack Mr Allister claimed the DUP was engaging in “disingenuous spin” over its Assembly group meeting on Monday.

It saw some 40% of of the party’s MLAs opposing a proposed agreement on the devolution of policing and justice powers.

The ex-MEP said: “The sad reality of this week is that since Monday the DUP — whose rebuffed leader was content with the vacuity and ‘constructive ambiguity’ of last weekend’s deal — has been back at Hillsborough begging Sinn Fein to throw him a few crumbs to keep him and their deal afloat. Any deal which now is the product of such abasement to IRA/Sinn Fein should fool no one.

“The spectacle of recent days vividly points up the falsity of past DUP claims that, in contrast to Trimble, they had put an end to Sinn Fein holding devolution to ransom.

“Not so long ago the DUP was

boasting it had ‘ended the era of stop/start devolution and the intervention and interference of British and Irish Prime Ministers’. What, then, has the last 10 days been about other than Sinn Fein, with its gun to the DUP’s head, extracting more concessions as the price of keeping Stormont going?

“All I can see that far from ending the drip,drip of concessions to Sinn Fein, the DUP has become the hapless props for Sinn Fein’s staging post strategy. Such is what inevitably happens when you embrace an unworkable system built on toxic vetoes to Sinn Fein.”